For the second year in a row, college graduation season is being marked by student activism in solidarity with Palestine, and consequent backlash. Around the world — from Rutgers University, to Cambridge University in the U.K. to University of Doha for Science and Technology in Qatar — students have chanted “Free Palestine” or held Palestinian flags while crossing the graduation stage, sometimes to threats of arrest. New York University and George Washington University both made headlines this past week for penalizing graduation student speakers who brought Palestine into their speeches.
On Wednesday May 14, during the graduation ceremony for New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, student and actor Logan Rozos — featured in Teen Vogue in 2020, as a member of GLAAD’s “20 Under 20” list of LGBTQ youth — went off-script. “My moral and political commitments guide me to say that the only appropriate thing to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine,” Rozos, 24, who Them notes is both Black and trans, said. “I want to say that the genocide currently occurring is supported politically and militarily by the Unted States, is paid for by our tax dollars, and has been livestreamed to our phones for the past 18 months.”
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In response, NYU announced via a statement that they were withholding Rozos’s diploma while pursuing disciplinary action, without specifying which rules he had broken. (Them did not receive a response to their request for comment.)
On Saturday May 17, student speaker Cecilia Culver took the podium at the ceremony for George Washington University’s Columbian College of Arts & Sciences. “I call upon the class of 2025 to withhold donations and continue advocating for disclosure and divestment,” Culver said during her remarks. "I cannot celebrate my own graduation without a heavy heart knowing how many students in Palestine have been forced to stop their studies, expelled from their homes, and killed for simply remaining in the country of their ancestors." During the GWU commencement, “pro-Palestine protesters” were escorted away from the event, according to local news; other graduates brought signs and keffiyehs on the graduation stage.
On Monday the 19th, the school issued a statement calling Culver’s conduct “inappropriate and dishonest,” stating that she “submitted and recited in rehearsal very different remarks than those she delivered at the ceremony,” and that going forward, she was “barred from all GW’s campuses and sponsored events elsewhere.” Clips of Culver’s speech have gone widely viral. The graduate told student paper the Hatchet she was unsurprised by the backlash from the university, adding, “There was just never any point where I was not going to say something.”
Some students at Virginia Commonwealth University had their diplomas withheld in advance of graduation over campus protests this spring; others were banned from their graduation ceremonies, like at University of Texas at Dallas. Punished students from Columbia University were honored at a second “People’s Graduation” (Teen Vogue attended the first, last spring). Dr. Noor Abdalla, wife of Mahmoud Khalil — still being held in ICE detention in Louisiana — accepted a diploma on his behalf during the ceremony. On May 22, Khalil was able to see Abdalla and hold their newborn baby for the first time in advance of a meeting with the Louisiana judge who argued Khalil was eligible to be deported. Khalil's lawyers argued that to deport him would put his life at risk.
Protests and actions continue apace: Columbia alumni burned their diplomas outside Wednesday’s commencement ceremonies, where the current acting president received boos after mentioning Khalil’s absence. Student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was held in ICE detention in Vermont until being released on bail, was able to receive his diploma at a Columbia ceremony this week.
